What a difference four years can make.
That’s the resonant message emerging from a new report by Juniper, which projects that revenues from A2P SMS (Application-to-Person – defined as messages which are sent both to and from an application) will be worth almost $60 billion by 2018.
That’s up from $55 billion in 2013.
“The reach and reliability which SMS affords organizations looking to contact customers and employees remains far greater than many other forms of communication,” Juniper says.
The report – Mobile Messaging Markets: IM, Social, SMS, MMS, Email, RCS/RCS-e – found that A2P SMS would see growth both in terms of traffic and revenues over the forecast period.
For organizations such as financial services or ticketing providers, SMS is the most secure and reliable option for A2P communications, the report summary notes. Furthermore, it is ubiquitous – almost all handsets can receive SMS, however the fact that OTT messaging platforms frequently do not interoperate, and there are still a significant number of people without data plans, means they’re not appropriate for A2P communications.